The manufacture of semiconductors involves using gases of very high purity, such as oxygen, as well as highly corrosive materials. These gases are controlled by fluid manifolds made up of valves, regulators, pressure transducers, mass flow controllers and other components that must maintain the purity of the gas, and also maintain resistance to the corrosive effects of the fluids. Currently, gas panels are used for mixing, pre-mixing, purging, sampling and venting the gases. Typically, the gas panel is used to provide a gas or a mixture of gases into a reaction chamber. These gas panels have historically been made up of hundreds of discreet or individual components, such as valves, filters, flow regulators, pressure regulators, pressure transducers, and connections. The fluid manifolds are designed to provide desired functions, such as mixing and purging, by uniquely configuring the various discreet components.
Modular manifold systems have been introduced into the industry in order to overcome these problems. A gas panel comprising a plurality of modular blocks with passages routed in the blocks is described by Markulec et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,836,355). Modular substrate blocks which have both directional and transverse flow direction capabilities united in a single modular substrate block are described by Hollingshead (U.S. Pat. No. 6,085,783). These modular systems were typically fashioned with the entire modular block made of high purity metal required for manufacture of semiconductors. Accordingly, these block components had high manufacturing costs due to the cost of the material and the complexity of machining multiple passageways of a single block.
A modular block using different materials for the fluid passageway and the block is described in Eidsmore et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,629,546). In this system, the manifold system includes one or more bridge fittings that are mounted within a channel of a backing plate for structural support or in a support block. Thus, the bridge fittings are supported from beneath. Ohmi et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 6,039,360) describes a gas panel having a holding member with a U-shaped cross-section and a channel member held by the holding member. A disadvantage of these systems is that the configuration of the system cannot be modified without taking the system apart.
More recently, a gas panel assembly having separate block and pipe modular components was disclosed in co-owned U.S. patent application “Gas-Panel Assembly,” Ser. No. 11/105,730, filed Apr. 13, 2005. The modular gas panel assembly disclosed permits easy replacement and/or addition or removal of gas components within individual sticks, and removal of pipe modules within a stick for cleaning, replacement or reconfiguring. However, reconfiguring the assembly to add or remove sticks, or to clean or replace pipe connections between adjacent sticks, still requires removal of several gas components and modular blocks in each stick. It would thus be desirable to further modify the modular system, and more generally, any gas panel system, to allow sticks to be added or removed from the assembly, or the pipe modules connecting adjacent sticks to be replaced and/or reconfigured with minimal disturbance of the components already in place. It would also be desirable to modify a gas panel system to simply gas-purging operations that are required periodically to clean the assembly or prepare it for use with different gas components.